Thread by @levelsio (@levelsio)

One of the main things I learnt from the fall of the Spanish and Portuguese empires is that they both never re-invested their wealth They instead built gold plated palaces (see the one in Mafra full of Brazilian gold) and other types opulence And they thought the colonies would remain forever so they were fully dependent on the wealth from there (sugar, gold, silver, coffee) But once they became independent, they lost a large share of their GDP overnight, Portugal lost about 80% of their income after Brazil went independent in 1822! If they would instead have re-invested the wealth, they could have developed industry and new businesses but they became resource dependent instead One interesting thing about the relatively young states of UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia is that they do exactly that. UAE and Qatar heavily invest their oil money to become destinations to live and Saudi Arabia is one of the top investors in tech startups worldwide On a personal level I also learnt from this to do the same, don't waste the money you made on assets that don't return (like cars, boats, general opulence) Instead try to re-invest most of it so you get income from new sources so that if the income sources that made you the wealth (for me my startups) eventually dry up (almost guaranteed in business, see the business or "product life cycle") you have already switched to the new industry I personally do that through ETFs, stocks, real estate and a little bit of startup investing So yes don't be like the Spanish or Portuguese empire 👌